Cell relay technology is emerging as the method of choice for integrated communication networks. Such networks carry a wide variety of traffic types from different applications--data, voice, image and video being the often cited examples. Using a cell relay mechanism to packet switch different traffic types in the network provides a means for achieving integration of both transmission and switching resources while providing Quality-of-Service (QOS) guarantees.
Setting aside capacity on network links for reducing blocking probabilities for connections has been shown. Previous methods considered only connection blocking. However, there is a need for a method of allocating bandwidth on internodal links in the integrated communication network that at least provides statistical gains while maintaining end-to-end delay QOS objectives for different traffic types.